A big win deserves a bad pun.
It’s impossible to draw up the blueprint for the perfect win for the moment. Impossible, yes, because you can’t script a baseball game (or at least you can’t expect it to follow the script; by all means, write away). But also impossible because, in order to arrive at the perfect win for the moment, you must at least stop for gas in Badlossland, or maybe grab a burger at Ohno Hill, or perhaps take a pee break at Shitsville.
And even when you are the one writing the perfect script, you have to at least consider that the actors will abandon it halfway through, right when you’ve created the perfect obstacle to overcome on the path to redemption.
For instance, the first inning of Tuesday night’s game between the San Francisco Giants and Arizona Diamondbacks. The Giants, you surely know, entered the game having lost four consecutive games. They’re threatening to wipe the memory of that gorgeous start to the season straight from your brain as though you’ve been zapped by the Men in Black memory device. They’re in danger of seeing the clock strike midnight and turning back into a pumpkin. They’re so aware of that danger, even, that on Tuesday they eschewed their standard pumpkin-tinted jerseys in favor of their eclectic eggplant-colored ones. Real subtle, Giants. No one will ever notice.
The second batter of the game, Corbin Carroll, roped a single off of Giants pitcher Robbie Ray. The next batter, Randal Grichuk, did the same. The next batter, Eugenio Suárez, smacked a double, and the next batter, Josh Naylor, added a single.
In a span of nine pitches, the D-Backs had registered four hits and produced three runs, and the Giants — who had scored more than three runs just once in their last five games — were in trouble.
And so we again arrive at the danger of baseball script-writing. The perfect script features the Diamondbacks pouring on runs against an undefeated Giants pitcher before any San Francisco hitter steps into the box. They have to feel the pain of an incoming fifth straight loss, so that the eventual win is that much more satisfying. They have to dabble in defeat, to prove to themselves that they can not just win baseball games, but overcome deficits and dangers. There’s nothing more powerful than a baseball team that has learned it can flip a deficit on its head, but my goodness you can’t go about seeking losing scores just to try and reverse them. These things have to occur naturally.
Because, really, when Ray gave up four consecutive hits and needed 26 pitches to get through the inning, you weren’t thinking about how great of a story this game was shaping up to be. You were instead thinking, Why doesn’t Netflix make anything good anymore, are these really my only options for something else to watch tonight?
So it goes that the perfect story shares a lot of opening scenes with the worst story.
It didn’t take long for the story to shift. Wilmer Flores led off the second inning with a single against Brandon Pfaadt, whose last name is surely the noise he inspired his fanbase to make later in the inning. Willy Adames walked, and LaMonte Wade Jr. had the kind of at-bat you have when you’re having the worst individual season imaginable for a team on a skid: a fly ball that would have been a home run in five ballparks, but instead dropped idly into the mitt of Carroll.
Then Patrick Bailey walked, and the bases were loaded. Specifically, the bases were loaded for Christian Koss, the de facto second baseman in Tyler Fitzgerald’s absence. Koss, the feel-good story who shockingly made the roster because the Giants were so impressed by his defense, Gamer Attitude™ and Play The Game The Right Wayness, that they were willing to overlook his timid bat.
And Koss, with shades of one very special Giants middle infielder of the not-so-distant past, made his first career home run a four-bagger.
Suddenly the awful script had turned into a beautiful one, and the Giants just needed to finish the job to make it a perfect one. Ray had, at this point, settled down, and started mowing down batters, occasionally getting into trouble, but always looking in control. He did what felt impossible after that first frame, pitching six innings without allowing another run, giving up seven hits and three walks in the process, but striking out nine. The Giants remain undefeated in his starts, which seems like it might potentially be a good thing.
And for the Giants, Koss’ latest excursion with clutch hitting seemed to spark something (ninth-place hitters providing the offense will do that to a team). They struck again in the sixth inning, when Flores drew a walk against new pitcher Juan Morillo, and Adames, quietly heating up, smashed a gorgeous home run for a pair of comforting insurance runs.
Big flies have a way of inspiring small rallies, though, and the Giants added a third run in the inning on a pair of singles by Wade and Koss, and a generous wild pitch from Morillo.
Suddenly it was a delightful 7-3 game, but the Giants weren’t yet content. Scriptwriters rarely are. The dagger came in the eighth inning, after the D-Backs had gotten a run back courtesy of a Carroll solo home run, as he got the best of his former top prospect battle with Kyle Harrison.
The Giants had what began as a mild-mannered rally off of old friend Joe Mantiply, with Mike Yastrzemski squeezing a double in between outs made by Koss and Matt Chapman. That brought up Heliot Ramos, with a runner in scoring position but two outs.
Arizona made the decision to intentionally walk Ramos, opting to instead face … Jung Hoo Lee.
You can certainly understand the reasoning. Mantiply, a southpaw, has historically been quite strong against lefties and quite weak against righties. And Ramos is a player who had one of the best seasons against lefties in baseball history last year.
Still and all, there’s a reason you don’t normally see teams intentionally walk a batter so that they can face a cleanup hitter who has a .318 batting average against the handedness he’ll be facing (something something ask the Yankees, I don’t wanna talk about it anymore something something). It’s probably the right idea on paper, though not the paper the Giants were using to ink their story on.
Or, I guess, absolutely the right idea on that paper, as Lee — on Korean Heritage Night at Oracle Park — blasted his first home run in San Francisco this year.
And the route was on.
That three-run blast saved Ryan Walker from having to use up valuable pitches in his arm, which in turn cost the Giants a few runs, as Spencer Bivens plunked a batter and then gave up a two-run homer to Naylor in the ninth.
But that’s all window-dressing. The Giants had completed their perfect script: they fell behind, faced their fears, and proved they can still come out on top, winning 10-6 against a team they’re trying to stave off in the division standings.
And tomorrow, they’ll look to add on and win the series.